


No Lady

by doomcanary



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-20
Updated: 2014-03-20
Packaged: 2018-01-16 08:24:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1338655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doomcanary/pseuds/doomcanary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gwen knows what she is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Lady

Morgana reaches out, touches Gwen's face; her clear eyes are troubled, seas of thought that wash and fall back like waves. Gwen looks up at her, startled; looks away.

“I am no lady,” she says.

Morgana watches Gwen; watches her bustle, smile at the other servants, live. She walks through the castle a spirit, trailing silk that flows on the air like water; this is a world she does not touch. Gwen's is a world she cannot live in.

Gwen will never open those gates for her; she knows where she belongs. Cannot imagine herself ever belonging anywhere else, least of all in the cold stone halls and distant courtly chambers of Camelot. Gwen is no lady; Morgana knows how deeply she believes that.

Morgana feels like the sea, sometimes; as if she has in her heart a vast world of clear green water, falling away to cavernous, limitless depths. Gwen to her is like the silver fish that dart at the surface, where light and sunshine warm the ocean's cold, salt veins. Morgana may wash on the shore, may storm and rage and fling herself towards the land, but she is never truly part of it; she cannot help but follow the pull of the moon, the fall of the slope, seep back down into the chill of her own soul.

And Gwen will never swim within her, never dive into her depths and look at them with wondering eyes, an ungainly mermaid never so loved; Morgana will not see her hair adrift on the tide, her body starlike, spread and floating. Gwen knows what she is.

Morgana has seen what she herself will be, in the end. The curse of a seer is to know your own fate, and that of all those around you. They will all die, human deaths, ordinary. Only Arthur will be borne away to Avalon; and Merlin, half-immortal, will sleep beneath a hill.

Gwen will die a queen. If only she understood.

She writes to Gwen, letters she will never send, letters she burns.

_I cannot ask you to be something you are not._

_I cannot force you to choose me, to live between two worlds for my sake._

_I am not the same as you, even when I am._

_We are twin souls, even when we are not._

_It is not my place to live your life for you. The choices are yours._

_All I can tell you is that I love you, and I pray you will choose me._

_For a day, for a year, for a lifetime. Your presence will be enough. If I must let go, I will do it, when the time comes. Heroes do much more than wield a sword._

_Heroes do much more than wield a sword. Do you know what you are?_

_I am no lady either. None of us are._

Because Gwen is stronger than she knows; greater than she knows. Morgana is the ocean, Gwen the land. They are not the same; never the same. But they are inseparable, and they feed each other. From Morgana the rain, that brings lush greenness to the land; but it is the land that cups the ocean in its hands; the dark soft earth with its heart stout as granite that holds the ocean up, and fathoms its depths.

_You give me hope._


End file.
